Maximize your hotel's visibility with AI Search

It’s a truly exciting time to be in digital marketing. The rise of LLM’s over the past few years has led to an incredible shift in consumer behavior. AI engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity have introduced a new type of search engine experience that takes away an immense amount of friction compared to the traditional search engine marketing experience. It’s driven Google to rapidly advance its search product to introduce and evolve with features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, to retain market share and keep users on Google products. 

Our team has been researching, studying, and analyzing the user experience of these emerging technologies over the past few years. We have been deeply focused on how they work, how they compare to more traditional search engines, and what that means for helping our hotel clients ensure visibility as more and more consumers engage with these products. We’ve studied ChatGPT Search, from beta to live environments (here’s the webinar in case you missed it), and will soon be launching a webinar around our recent study of AI Mode (sign up for our newsletter to be alerted of the date). 

Our understanding of what drives visibility on AI search engines continues to evolve, as will our services to best support our hotel clients. These new answer engines are adding and ultimately replacing what used to take potential guests a massive amount of clicks to research. Ensuring your hotel is visible on the channels and content that AI engines are sourcing from is critical.

Here’s a breakdown of what we know about visibility on AI answer engines, along with what hotels need to do to best ensure and maximize visibility in these searches.

What is AI search, and how does it work?

Before we dive into what your hotel should do now to maximize chances for visibility, it’s important to understand how AI search works.

1. AI search is powered by LLMs

AI search answers are driven by large language models. The knowledge of LLMs comes from their ability to train on data from a variety of sources. They retrieve and then summarize this data for our searches, called prompts, resulting in a compilation of data it’s learned from countless sources. These LLMs all have a cut-off date for the recency of data they source. They then rely on using established search indexes, most commonly Bing, to do live retrieval for more up-to-date information. You can think of LLM’s like super-powered auto-predict. Their knowledge is based on an understanding of entity linking or the connection between references, in an effort to predict what comes next to answer your prompt or request. This indicates that the more your brand is mentioned/found across sources related to a specific topic, the more likely it is to associate your brand with the answer the users are looking for when they submit a query on that topic. 

2. LLM’s love structured content

The basis of this knowledge comes from the background that the sources LLM’s train on are centered around structured architecture. They love sites with content structured like YouTube, Reddit, and listicles (think top 10 lists). They devour formats like community forms with comments and up/down voting. They give preference for blog content providing distinct headers, lists, and bullet formats. For hotels, they often source and showcase attributes pulled from structured data on sites and sources such as Google Business Profile. They then use these structured sources, schema, and more to provide the best answer they can.

3. AI search reporting is limited

ChatGPT, Perplecity, AI Mode, you name it, reporting is even more limited than what’s been historically provided by search engines for organic search data. While Google has recently included AI mode data in Search Console, you still can’t separate it out to know how much of your organic impressions or clicks come from this feature. ChatGPT offers no search-console-like reporting. The best we have right now is looking in GA4 to find whatever clicks make it to the site. The hard part is, these types of answer engines are designed to drive fewer clicks, so without impression or mention insights, we’re missing out on an important piece of performance insights. 

While there have been numerous AI search reporting tools coming out, the extreme personalization and varied results by user make it incredibly hard to scrape and provide a position ranking report. We predict that this will continue to evolve as the top minds in the industry, driving platforms like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and more, continue to ideate on solutions.

What can hotels do to ensure visibility on AI search engines such as ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity?

While the industry’s understanding of AI search optimization continues to evolve, these are the areas or channels of focus we’ve identified to be most critical for hotels right now:

1. Emphasis on Local SEO 

Each different AI SEO study for hotels that we’ve completed has unveiled elements and sources that overlap with traditional local SEO. This includes:

• Google Business Profile listing attributes
• Google, TripAdvisor, and other guest reviews
• Consistency of hotel descriptions/up to date information found across listing sites on the web

2. Utilization of Schema/Structured Data on your hotel’s website

LLM’s love structured content. This applies to your hotel’s own website as well as other sources they prefer to learn from and source summary information. On your hotel website, this means making sure you’re using schema.org’s structured data markup for applicable information on your site, such as:

• Local business organization
• Product
• FAQs and more

3. Expand and revisit your hotel’s website content

Ensuring your hotel’s website has comprehensive information about different amenities and features of your hotel, as well as the local area, is important to being represented in AI search results. This includes:

• Well-rounded content in multi-modal form - text, image, video
• Conversational text
• Expanded content to fully answer topics and questions
• Structured content, including FAQs

4. Technical SEO and site architecture 

While Technical SEO has been historically important for traditional search engines, its focus is enhanced for AI agents. This includes:

• Reviewing site code for proper markup
• Reviewing site health and page speed, such as Core Web Vitals
• Ensuring to resolve and address other technical seo issues on your hotel’s website
• Internal linking strategies for related content 

5. Social Media content

If it wasn’t already, the new world of SEO is quickly changing to a “search everywhere optimization” definition. Recent updates, such as news of the Instagram indexing controls, are bringing new light to how social media content is surfacing on search engines, including AI search. Make sure your property is:

• Communicating blogs, news, reviews, and features about your brand via organic social media posts. 
• Participating and responding to comments and conversations

6. PR and link building

One metric that continues to be noted with high importance for AI search optimization is the concept of ‘brand mentions’. In traditional SEO, link building has been a long-standing tactic for off-page SEO. In the view of LLMs and AI search, high amounts of brand mentions with context around specific topics increase your brand’s chances of being included in summaries and answers for those types of prompts. It’s essential to be competitive in this space. This includes:

• Building partnerships with local, related organizations and coordinating online mentions or website links
• Local listing sites such as the Chamber of Commerce
• Finding a PR agency to help secure inclusion and brand mentions in top publications
• Working with bloggers, tied closely to your local region and/or affinity audiences, to be featured in their top 10 lists or area guide articles

7. YouTube, Reddit, and community forms

Did you know that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine? It’s also one of the favorite sources for LLM’s to learn from. Why? Because of the structured format of the content. From its videos, to titles and descriptions, comments, and thumbs up/down voting, it’s easy to consume and contains an incredible amount of information. Similarly, community forms like Reddit and Quora offer easy-to-consume data for LLM’s to study and learn. These pose additional opportunities for hotels to increase visibility, whether it’s through their own (or influencers') channels on YouTube, related community threads on Reddit or TripAdvisor, and more.

There are numerous facets to visibility and ranking in AI SEO, similar to traditional SEO. As you may have noticed, a lot of them even overlap with tactics that are important for traditional SEO. It can be overwhelming when trying to navigate limited resources or budget. We recommend focusing on the critical ones and testing new ones as you find new resources to support your AI SEO endeavours and, ultimately, building your brand. Lean on partners that specialize in each of these areas of expertise and services. 

Our hotel marketing team is here to support your goals as well as recommend additional resources that can help achieve them. Please reach out with your questions; our team is happy to assist.

[E-book] Your complete 10-step guide to 2026 marketing & budget success

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This ebook explores key trends and practical tips to help you align your digital investments with your property’s goals. Plan effectively, invest wisely, and set your hotel up for success in 2026. 🚀

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GCommerce named one of the top marketing agencies by Mediaboom

We’re proud to share that GCommerce has been recognized by Mediaboom as one of the best hotel marketing agencies! 

In their recent roundup, Mediaboom highlights agencies that deliver measurable results for hotels by boosting direct bookings, optimizing digital strategies, and helping properties stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

GCommerce was featured for our expertise in paid search, metasearch, social advertising, display, and web design, as well as our proprietary metasearch tool, Metadesk, which drives stronger performance for our hospitality partners.

Check out the full list and see why GCommerce continues to be a trusted partner for hotels.

View the full article on Mediaboom.

Up your email game this cyber season

As the cyber sale season draws near, hoteliers have a major opportunity to drive bookings and build momentum heading into the new year. Based on last year’s data and emerging trends for 2025, here are our top tips for getting the most out of your cyber season email campaigns. 

Start early and end late

Don’t wait for Black Friday to start promoting your sale! Data from last year shows that starting cyber season efforts on the Friday or Saturday before Thanksgiving and extending sale efforts up to five days after Cyber Monday yields stronger results. 

As more importance is placed on the cyber season, we’re seeing searches for sales on Cyber Monday grow year-over-year. Travel Tuesday is also showing upward growth, so make sure to take advantage of the entire cyber season. 

Pro tip: Start building anticipation in the weeks leading up to the sale with sneak peeks, countdowns, and teaser content. 

Double down on early access and last chance emails

Based on our 2024 campaign data, we found that early access emails had the highest click rates and drove the most revenue amongst our email clients that ran cyber sales. We also noted that last chance emails had the highest open rates. Include messaging like “exclusive” and “just for our subscribers” to encourage purchases on early access emails. In last-chance emails, instill a sense of urgency by using messaging like “limited time” and “this sale won’t last much longer.” 

Our recommendation: Send early access emails 3-5 days before the general sale to reward loyal subscribers and drive early momentum. 

Use smart subject lines

Subject line testing from last season revealed two key insights. First, subject lines that mixed lowercase and all caps performed best. Second, subject lines that did not include the exact offer percentage generated more purchases. Mystery and formatting both matter! 

Try subject line trigger words like:

• Priority Access STARTS NOW
• VIP Perks Expiring SOON
• An Important Update JUST FOR YOU

Optimize send times

According to recent trends, the best times to send emails are mid-week morning, particularly Tuesday through Thursday, between 9-11 AM (local time). These trends suggest users are more likely to engage after they’ve tackled Monday’s chaos, but before mid-week meetings and emails clutter their inboxes. 

Reminder: Always A/B test timing with your specific audience to learn their behaviors and get the best results. 

Use high-impact content

With more users choosing to shop exclusively online, cyber season emails compete for attention. To stand out, keep messaging short and skimmable. Too much content could risk losing attention. Use stunning images or subtle animation to encourage engagement. Include multiple clear call-to-action buttons for more opportunities for conversion. Build urgency through copy like “limited time only,” “only X days left,” or “ending soon”. 

Capitalize on peak email engagement

Between October 15th and December 16th, inbox engagement is at its peak. Opt-in rates are 230% higher than other times of the year, and open rates are 24% higher. Use this window to grow your list and send high-converting content, including offers tied to next year, which perform better than standard deals. 

Some ideas to capitalize on this time period include positioning offers as “2026 Pre-Sale,” “Plan Ahead & Save,” or “Book Now, Travel Later.” 

Include key email types

With inbox competition at an all-time high during the cyber sale season, it’s important to make the most of your email marketing efforts. These email types can benefit your cyber sale campaign flow. 

• Pre-Sale/Early Access Emails to encourage subscribers to take advantage of the sale before the general public. 
• Abandoned Cart Reminders are a great way to encourage bookings when a user was very close to converting. 
• Gift Guides with themed experiences or packages can be personalized and target specific segments. 
• Last Chance/Final Hours Emails have been shown to encourage engagement and can entice users to book their trip. 

Plan now, and win big this cyber season

The cyber season is no longer a one-day event. It’s a multi-week strategy that, when executed well, can drive significant revenue for hotels and resorts. The key? Get ahead, test everything, and make your guests feel like VIPs every step of the way.

If you’re ready to elevate your email strategy, GCommerce Solutions has the tools and insights to make this cyber season the best yet.